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Pizza is often the answer to myriad pressing questions. What to serve a ravenous kid for dinner when you've just come home from work? What to eat after a happy hour that somehow lasted well into the evening (oops)?
Immediacy is key -- but so often, we find that delivery pizza disappoints. It can be expensive and slow, and unless it's transported with care, it can show up cold and unappealing. Enter frozen pizza, the hero of many such clutch situations.
Not all pies are created equal, though. Of the pack of pies in your grocer's freezer, some are duds, but some are sure to offer you the winner, winner, pizza dinner (or snack) you're craving.
We sampled 11 top brands in a blind taste test to determine which box you should stash in your freezer. Some, we found, are good enough that you might not even wait for a pizza-mergency to break out. Others, though, left us cold. Here's how they sliced up.
Score: 13
Trader Joe's is a destination for many cult favorite grocery items, but this pie from "Trader Giotto's" didn't make the cut. "Soft" might be a quality you look for in, say, a pair of bedroom slippers or a cozy blanket. But a pizza? No, thanks -- but that's just how three tasters described it. "Mushy" and "doughy" were also used to cement this sad specimen's place at the bottom of nearly everyone's list.
Of the chain's pizza options, we picked this one because it best lined up with the others on our list, though it seems like there are far better selections in TJ's freezer chest if you want something other than a standard cheese. (I'm partial to one topped with uncured pepperoni.)
We've liked some of this mega-chain's store brand items in previous tests, but alas, the pizza was a flop. Several taste testers detected the distinct presence of oregano, but that wasn't enough to redeem this sad entrant. "Tastes like herbed cardboard," according to one. Some found the cheese to be greasy and unappealingly congealed.
People noticed the ultrathin crust off the bat, with one giving it the distinction of being the thinnest of the bunch -- and that seemed at first blush like a good thing. But it didn't offer the payoff they hoped for. "Looked crispy, but actually quite chewy," lamented one taster. "Super thin! But not crisp (boo!)," another concurred. Some liked the slight sweetness in the sauce, but it turned off at least one, who likened it to "Heinz ketchup."
This pie was one of the more upscale pies in the mix, promising luxe touches such as "hickory-smoked Gouda" and "herbed tomato and olive oil sauce." While one taster clocked a smoky note -- "almost a bacon taste?" they wondered -- the high-end toppings didn't impress most of the crowd. "Grade-school cafeteria vibes," one said. A few found the sauce to be scarce: "Weird watery situation where sauce should be."
This one gave a couple of tasters nostalgia-induced swoons for its middle-of-the-road, "very standard frozen pizza" profile. "Reminds me of childhood," one said. "This is the pizza of my childhood," echoed another. One liked that it didn't go too far in any direction. "It knows what it is," they declared. Looking for a straightforward option? Maybe it's no wonder that this "decent" (per one taster) brand is the top seller in the United States.
Plentiful cheese on this pizza-testant was both a positive and a negative -- some said the bountiful dairy crown didn't fully melt, leaving shreds unappealingly intact, while others found the "complex, parm-y" topping to be a plus. "I can still see individual strands of cheese that didn't melt," one complained. But no matter the polarizing outer layer, the underlying crust didn't win any fans, with one calling it "spongy rather than crisp."
This brand is known for its rising crusts, and since its thin-crust variety wasn't widely available in the area, we went with the most basic version we could find. Tasters noticed that this was a little puffier than many of the other pies they were tasting. Some really liked it -- sample compliments included "dig the thicker crust" and "fluffy" -- but the more substantial base wasn't as flavorful as some would like. "Tastes like air," was one dismissive assessment, and a couple of others thought the bottom layer was too doughy.
This brand boasted of an "overtopped" pie on its packaging, and it didn't disappoint in its excess. Fans found this one "gooey" and nicely brown, with one going as far to say that the pie had an "alfredo-y vibe from the molten cheese." Visible flecks of herbs also lent flavor, and several tasters noted a pronounced garlic flavor. (The ingredients list the allium as a component of the sauce.) But this one seemed to offer inconsistently distributed toppings, which might have led a couple of detractors to downvote it; both found it floppy.
You know that guy at the office who gets by (and promoted) merely by not offending anyone? That's this pizza, which no one on our panel found completely objectionable. "Straight-up mid," said one. "Not terrible," pronounced another. But this was another brand that seemed to have an inconsistent appearance throughout the pie, which might have explained why several tasters gave it higher marks. "Good crunch on the bottom," one said. Several liked its relatively substantial, not-too-thin crust and robust flavor.
Hello, fancy! This fella had a distinctly classier feel than many of its brethren, thanks to a dusting of flour on the exterior of the crust. "Tasted like the most high-end," remarked one taster. "The flour makes it feel more homemade," said another. And the sauce -- often the most overlooked aspect of a successful 'za -- won a number of our judges over with its fresher, tomato-forward stealth appeal. One praised the "good cheese coverage," though another found the cheese itself to be a little bland. (Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
This archetypal slice won near-universal plaudits, with fans lauding it for its handsome looks ("the prettiest, most delicious looking" of the lineup, per one colleague), as well as on all three fronts of pizza-dom: crust, sauce and cheese. Starting from the bottom, people liked the sturdy, toothsome crunch that managed to be substantial but not doughy, with crunch that pleased several tasters. The sauce was more of a semi-silent partner, with several calling it solid. The cheese was the standout, though, with a couple of people giving high-fives to that elusive sensation of "pull" -- when you're biting into a slice, with the cheese tearing away in lovely ribbons.
All in all, this was the clear winner. Even after a long taste test, some still found it irresistible. Said one, "I keep going back for bits, so that's saying something."
(Price: $4.67/19.1 ounces at Walmart)
The lineup: We started with a list of the top-selling frozen pizza brands from Chicago-based market research firm Circana, which draws its numbers from grocery, drug, mass-market, convenience, military and select club and dollar retailers. For "private-label" or store brands, we chose from several leading national retailers. We opted to test each brand's cheese variety, eschewing those with pepperoni or other distinctive toppings. In choosing which variety from each brand to include, we picked the version that would offer the most apples-to-apples comparison, which often meant choosing a thin-crust version where available.
The process: In preparing the samples, we followed the instructions on the packaging for each, adhering to the exact time when specified, and using visual cues when offered a range (such as "until cheese is completely melted and crust is golden brown").
The judging: We used a blind taste test in which seven of our colleagues were given all 11 samples without knowing which brands they were tasting. Judges awarded each a score of 1 to 10, taking into account appearance, flavor and texture. Each sample had a possible high score of 70 and a low of 10.